02. Empires of Flux and Anchor (3 page)

She chuckled. "Always the soul of tact, aren't you?"

"After six hundred and forty-seven years I have earned the right not to have to play silly social games. You're—what?—thirty-six, and you look half as old as I do. Your eyes and bearing look even older, and that's going some."

"It hasn't been a very easy life, as you well know. That Yalah business a week ago took a lot out of me, too. I slept for three days after that, and since that time I've been happy just living simply and routinely here."

He rose slightly and looked on the table at the paper in front of her. It was a map of World, a very simple map with a few notations written in by Kasdi. It was a record of progress and achievement unprecedented in history, but he suspected that this record wasn't what she saw in that map. Instead, it represented seventeen years of hard work and sacrifice on her part. The map was her autobiography.

The map showed the seven "clusters" of Anchors, four to a group, or cluster, each equidistant from a Hellgate in the center of the square they formed. They were quite symmetrically spaced around the perimeter of the planet, a fact that only reinforced the logic of a divine plan. A full four clusters were now under the Reformed Church, more than half the planet, with the Fluxlands between, inside, or on the stringer routes through the void that connected them, all either under the control of her partisans or in truce with them. There were still many bizarre lands there, and many mad rulers like the late, unlamented Gyasiros, but all had chosen not to challenge her power but to accommodate it.

The rest had fallen through a combination of arms and sorcery, as had Gyasiros. They had been tough at the start, with much bloodshed and wizards' contests, but there were few such these days. The word was getting around, and all save the maddest of egomaniacs found some room in their demented psyches for a compromise between the Church's wishes and their own egos. Not that the old Church and the old order had been a pushover, but not since the Battle of Balacyn, fourteen years earlier, when armies of more than a million faced off in Flux, along with some of the most powerful living wizards known—on both sides—had they tried a major offensive. Still, the next cluster would be as well-defended as any in the past, and both sides still lost bitter and bloody battles.

In fact, although much of Flux was getting easier, the Anchors were becoming harder and harder, as the opposition had plenty of time to prepare and had learned so much about its foes. Now only stringers crossed the line between old and new, and only with difficulty and much suspicion.

"I worry about how much longer we have to go," she told him wearily. "How many more years, how many more lives?"

"I'd worry about what happens when it's done," he responded.

"Huh?"

"We're the founders of a new world here. Science once again is flowering in Anchor, and a freed people are building new institutions, new ways, that we never dreamed of. Eventually there will be greatness here again—and you will have shut yourself off from ever being a part of it. In the name of moving this world forward, you've pushed yourself backward to the most primitive sort of life. Have you ever thought of that?"

"No," she answered truthfully. "There's no way to do what must be done for this new world you speak of if I think of my own future. The next problem, the next march, the next Yalah, the next threat to what we have already built—those occupy my mind." She sighed. "I suppose I shall retire when it's over. Walk World from end to end, pole to pole, seeing all that there is to see. Perhaps teach or preach or both. I don't know. It's so far off."

"Maybe, maybe not."

"But that wasn't what you came all this way to talk about, and I know it. Now—what's the real reason for all this?"

"The greater evil is on the move once more. I think at least the first part of the move will be in your direction."

Her eyebrows rose. "You mean the Seven? I thought we must have weakened them enormously; it's been so long since they tried anything."

He sighed. "They are not at all weakened, nor is your statement correct. They are, in most cases, very much in the background. Only rarely does one like a Haldayne draw attention to himself, and then only when it's part of the plan. Just who do you think we've been fighting all these years?"

"Why, the old Church, of course!"

"And who exactly
is
the old Church? Doesn't corruption on such a scale show us something right there? I have just recently come into some information that suggests that Her Perfect Highness, the Queen of Heaven, might in fact be Gifford Haldayne's older sister."

That startled her. "What! I have fought them a long time, I know, but I never thought—"

"Yes, indeed," he interrupted. "Who would? This is not to say that the church is, as an entity, a direct and knowing agent of the Seven. Proof of
that
would be sufficient to win you the rest of World without lifting a finger. But the corruption begins at the very top. How do you suppose they finally discovered the gate entrances inside the temples, buried under the very foundations? They poked and probed and experimented until it was discovered—having access to temples."

"But—this is monstrous!"

"Indeed. However, up to now it's worked to our advantage. The Seven now control three of the gates through their subtle control of the church. They are very busy making certain they lose no more of those gates. Had we not discovered them shortly after they discovered the temple entrances and denied them access to at least one, they might have fulfilled their plan without us even realizing it was so until the hordes of Hell overran us. That's what your Soul Rider was rushing to Anchor Logh to prevent, and when it did, it rushed to some other emergency. Since then, they've been very busy just trying to hold onto what they have, and with not much success. If
you
spent years fighting off an attacker and still knew you were losing, would you keep on doing the same thing?"

She considered it. "No. Of course not. I would have acted long before this, in fact."

He nodded. "I think the Queen of Heaven is the boss—or was, anyway. She kept them in line because the church was the seat of her power, and she threw everything into trying to keep it. Now, however, my agents inform me that the others have rebelled, citing her failures, and that she has been forced to go along. There was allegedly a summit meeting of all Seven, the first such known to me. At that meeting all the restraints came off. Our friend the Queen of Heaven will continue to defend in her old ways, perhaps assisted by others, but there will now be a division of forces and a new direction. The word in Flux is that they want to tackle you first, before this grand new plan is put into operation."

"You mean, call me out and face me down? I'd almost welcome that, even three or four to one."

"Don't take it lightly. They are more powerful than any other wizards known, except for yourself. It is my firm conviction that one or perhaps several of them are at least your equal. However, calling you out is simply not their way. It would bring the Nine in a flash, and they know it. They are not ready to face down all of us. They are infinitely patient, preferring to minimize risks to themselves and suffer a thousand defeats if they gain the final victory. Still, they are diabolically clever and you must be on guard." He paused a moment. "I fear that your one soft spot in your armor may be in peril."

She felt a shock go through her. "But—how could they know? And if they did, why haven't they acted before now?"

He shrugged. "I don't know if they know or not, but as to the timing—perhaps, like the Hellgate, they just found out. As I said, they are a patient lot. And
that
brings up a rather chilling question. What would you do if they got her and offered a trade?"

She shivered at the idea. "I don't know. I honestly don't."

"You would not be permitted to do so," he warned her. "The Nine would prevent you, no matter what. You are a symbol that, right now, we cannot do without."

"But the Seven know that, too. Isn't that some form of insurance?"

He shook his head sadly. "Perhaps. But they are devious in the extreme. They have failed militarily. To gain the seven gates, they must infiltrate and, if possible, corrupt the Reformed Church. To do that, they must remove—or corrupt—you." He sighed. "We could put more of a watch on her, of course, but that alone might tip them off if they don't yet have the exact one. Or we could bring her here, to Hope. It is the best-guarded, safest place anyone could be."

She shook her head negatively at that. "What sort of life would it be for her here? She's shown no inclination towards the priesthood and much for the boys. There'd be no joy for her in Hope."

"You didn't have much inclination for the priesthood yourself at her age, and look what happened to you. But, let that pass for now. There is always Pericles, which is also as safe as they come."

"But just taking her there would point a finger at her.
Then
they would
know,
and, as you said, they are patient. She would be a prisoner there for as long as I was a
threat to the Seven. That might be decades."

"Then we leave things as they are," the wizard said flatly. "I don't like it, but there it is. At least you should do one thing for her—you should tell her her true origins and parentage."

The idea frightened her. "Uh—no. Not yet. She would never understand. She would never forgive me!"

"If she is at risk, she must know it and know the reason why. She must be prepared to defend herself. If we do not remove her from harm's way, then we must give her every chance. We can't keep diverting her, nailing her into Anchor Logh. She's inquisitive, just like her mother. She wants to see the whole of World. I think it is time. You have inflicted so much sacrifice and injury upon yourself—now it is time to do it once more, this time for the sake of another."

She sighed. "I'll meditate and pray on it. That's all I'll promise right now."

"Don't think or meditate or pray too long," he warned her. "Evil is on the march once more, and the more they are set back, the more determined, devious, and dangerous they become."

Tomorrow would be a Service of Ordination at the Temple of Hope. When she was there, Kasdi liked to preside over it herself, although there were by now many other powerful wizard-priestesses capable of administering the rites. It was something she liked to do, a sort of affirmation of the rightness of her cause and the future of World to see those bright, young faces eagerly accept the vows without coercion.

Once young women were almost forced into the priesthood when they possessed some talent or ability the church needed. They were immediately ordained so they could never quit, then underwent three years of rigid indoctrination—brainwashing, she'd heard it called. She had changed all that when she'd abolished the barbaric and terrible Paring Rite that had cast her out of Anchor into Flux. Now the Flux, at least in her areas, was not such a terrible or threatening place, and population controls were managed quite easily by voluntary shifts. Those who discovered that they had some Flux power—either false, in which all their spells were illusion, or true, in which their will could truly become reality—usually opted for training and a new life in Flux anyway.

Now, at the completion of required school, young women were shown the possibilities the priesthood offered. The parish had always been the center of social life in Anchor, and the priesthood was highly respected, even more now than under the old way. If a young woman so chose, she could come to Hope, at Church expense, and spend two years as an acolyte, living a very spartan life under strict discipline while learning the intricacies of the preisthood and the faith. They were not ordained at that time, and if the spare lifestyle, the lack of comforts and modern conveniences, was too much for them, they could ask to leave and would be returned. If they found their religious training boring and their potential occupations wrong, they could also leave, and were encouraged to do so. Those that remained, about thirty percent of the women who began, could then request ordination and go on to deeper, more complex subjects and train for their life's work.

The high washout rate, both voluntarily and otherwise, had given those who remained an extra feeling of pride and accomplishment. The initial life and training was intended to be rough, and it was—but those who survived it felt closer to each other and the church than ever. They felt like something special and had pride in themselves and their work.

Tomorrow a group numbering more than eighty would request ordination. Most would be given it without question, but a few would not, and it was those whom she wished to see that evening. These were the few that the teachers and psychologists suggested might be wrong for the job, and they required a different evaluation. Now Sister Kasdi sat in her barren Office, Mervyn's stuffed chair dematerialized back into energy, and waited for the first of the nine who had been sent for this final process.

The first girl entered, wearing only the white sheet-like garment that was all the acolytes were allowed. She looked very nervous, as was to be expected. She was a tall, gangly young woman, rather plain in appearance. She stood there, staring at the saint behind the table, a touch of awe in her face despite the situation.

"Child—tell me, why do you wish to become a priestess?" Kasdi asked pleasantly. All acolytes were referred to as "child" and "children" while here. "By that I mean, what made you choose to come here and undergo the training rather than something else someplace else?"

"Uh, Sister, I—I had no life in Anchor Chalee. I never had any close friends, and never any boyfriends. I wanted to do something
important
with my life, something that would do good and make folks look up to me. My marks were pretty good, though nothing great. This seemed like the place I had to be."

Kasdi nodded, mostly to herself. Although she was using a spell to divine the truth, she was not compelling it. The brutal honesty of the girl was refreshing, if a bit
too
honest. She clearly had very low self-esteem, and that was not good. Her motives weren't wrong in and of themselves, but they contained no dedication to the spiritual at all.